Pro bono is part of our DNA. The founding president of the Brennan Center for Justice began our group, and many of our lawyers devoted their careers to public service before joining us. The result is a practice in which we encourage our lawyers to devote themselves to the causes that matter to them, supported by the resources that a large law firm can provide.
Those causes take numerous forms. We work with the National Veterans Legal Services Program to represent deserving veterans who have been deprived of the benefits they earned. We have teamed up with the New York Office of the Appellate ...

History
That financing and a number of copy-cats that rapidly followed were tax-exempt and primarily driven by then legal arbitrage possibilities. Many of these transactions were structured as lease financings or as installment sales of annuities. Tax-exempt pension obligation bonds largely came to an end with the introduction of tax legislation that became part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. However, we have continued to work on pension bonds that are tax-exempt because of special transition rules or special (non-arbitrage) situations.
A new taxable version of pension obligation bonds ...

Our Revenue Bond Financing Group focuses on enterprise revenue bonds, that is, bonds payable from the revenues of an enterprise conducted by the public entity that issues the bonds. Some of the these issues overlap practice areas and, when advantageous, we bring in expertise from other Orrick practice groups, including the Public Power Finance Group, the Water and Wastewater Finance Group, the Transportation Finance Group, the Industrial Development, Pollution Control and Solid Waste Financing Group, and the Health Care Finance Group. These issues might be handled by attorneys in several ...

Since 1985, members of our Water and Wastewater Financing Group have participated in over 800 tax-exempt financings aggregating nearly $80 billion dollars.
We participate in financings for a broad range of purposes such as:
Storage facilities
Treatment and pre-treatment facilities
Collection and distribution facilities
Desalination facilities
System expansion and maintenance
Rate relief and debt service savings
We particularly enjoy working with clients on long term capital programs and cutting edge financing structures and the development of new credits. ...

Since 1985, members of the Public Power Group have participated in more than 575 tax-exempt financings aggregating more than $106 billion in twenty-five U.S. states and territories, plus more than 95 taxable financings aggregating more than $55 billion for Federal power agencies and rural electric cooperatives. Orrick works with a broad range of issuer clients such as state agencies, small and large cities, districts, and joint action agencies, as well as with 9 of the 20 largest public power systems. We also work with the largest electric utility in the country (the Tennessee Valley ...

Employee benefit plan assets constitute the largest pool of investment capital in the United States and worldwide. The financial future of millions is governed by complex legal restrictions designed to protect their interests. Though complex, the restrictions need not prevent benefit plans from being full-fledged participants in the world's financial markets. Seasoned legal advice is essential to successfully navigating these potentially dangerous waters.
We have long advised the largest manager of benefit plan assets on ERISA fiduciary issues. We serve as outside fiduciary counsel to several ...

In conventional energy, our experience includes working with IOUs, municipal utilities, electric cooperatives and several Indian tribes. We also work with these entities and a variety of public and private developers on alternative and renewable energy projects. In many cases, we bring together our power purchase agreement-based energy practice with our emerging company equity financing practice focusing on clean energy to apply public finance tax-exempt debt financing to specific projects and programs.

This experience has proved invaluable in Orrick’s representation of companies that are increasingly the victims of all types of crimes whether the perpetrator is an insider or a competitor. Companies fall victim to crimes such as:
Cybercrime including hacking, phishing and malware attacks;
Theft of trade secrets and other intellectual property crimes;
Illegal counterfeiting of merchandise;
Price-fixing in violation of antitrust laws;
Embezzlement and kickback schemes;
Insider trading; and
...

​In the November 2013 edition of the American Bar Association's publication, Business Law Today, Orrick partner, Mark Mermelstein, and of counsel, Mona Amer, discuss the remedies and options for corporations battling cybercrime.

In addition, reliable access to capital has been interrupted in recent years by unprecedented turmoil and change in the bond market and the near disappearance of the bond insurance industry. Rising pension and post-employment benefits costs combined with a generally flat or only slightly increasing revenue picture have been significant challenges for many communities. Credit deterioration, on the part of both municipalities and financial counterparties, has caused some transactions, particularly those involving variable rate debt and/or interest rate swaps, to unravel. In the face of these ...

An Orrick team secured a complete victory in the Ninth Circuit on behalf of the City of Stockton, California in an appeal from an order confirming the plan of adjustment in the City’s chapter 9 bankruptcy case.

Lawyers in our Nonprofit practice have been providing legal counsel to nontraditional issuers such as corporations that are just now establishing nonprofit status, and to organizations that may not even have the assets to qualify for a tax-exempt bond issuance under typical circumstances.
We have acted as bond counsel for almost all of the tax-exempt financings for cultural institutions that have been done in New York and for numerous such financings in California. We also have extensive experience as bond counsel, underwriters’ counsel and institution counsel for colleges, universities, ...

A new lease accounting standard that takes effect next year could significantly impact financial covenant calculations by not-for-profit organizations under their borrowing agreements as well as the structure of future borrowing agreements and their choice of financing product.

Our School Financing Group played a significant role in developing financing substitutes, including lease certificates of participation (COP) financing, asset transfer lease/leasebacks, Mello-Roos financing, and Education Code 39308.5 financing (using pre-Proposition 13 tax overrides for new school facilities).
Innovative School Financing Solutions
When Proposition 46, adopted in June 1986, restored school districts’ authority to use general obligation bonds, Orrick responded by drafting and implementing legislation and conducting seminars outlining the new procedures by which school ...

Scope
We regularly act as bond counsel, disclosure counsel, underwriters counsel and direct purchaser’s counsel for health care finance transactions around the country. We have been specializing in health care finance since the early 1980s. Our practice encompasses financings for nonprofit 501(c)(3) health care systems, hospitals, clinics (including federally qualified health centers), retirement facilities, skilled nursing facilities, proton therapy centers and blood banks, as well as public health care providers.
We are long-standing members of the finance teams for many of the most active ...

Leading healthcare finance lawyer Robyn Helmlinger has joined Orrick's Public Finance Group as a partner, based in San Francisco. For two decades, Robyn has been advising issuers, borrowers and underwriters involved in issuing municipal bonds, with a focus in the U.S. healthcare industry.

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